‘Disgraced’ general Peter Kariuki continues search for justice

As serving and retired generals of the Kenya Defence Forces carried out the final rites for President Daniel arap Moi, one of them contemplated the regal spectacle with cold detachment — the nightmare of his exile from the military establishment, now in its 38th year, had been refreshed.

With the probable exception of family, everybody else calls Peter Mwagiru Kariuki “General” in deferential acknowledgment of his rank of Major-General.

HIGHEST HONOURS

He was the second commander of the Kenya Air Force from 1980 to 1982 when the roof collapsed over his head, thanks to the Commander-in-Chief they were now burying with the highest honours.

He was stripped of that rank by a court martial in 1983 and spent the next 31 years trying to get it back. Eventually, he succeeded. On March 21, 2014, the Court of Appeal ordered that “the appellant’s rank, benefits, honours and decorations be and are hereby restored”. He was also awarded damages.

But the government has not obeyed that order and as of today, the unpaid damages stand at Sh71,413,306.50. Furthermore, the military establishment is yet to restore his rank.

He is now back in the corridors of justice suing for contempt of court. He wants the Treasury Cabinet Secretary, Ministry of Defence Principal Secretary, the Chief of Defence Forces and the Kenya Air Force Commander committed to civil jail for disobeying the order.

RETIRING

In restoring his rank and granting him all the benefits befitting a retiring senior military officer, the Court of Appeal simply validated what everybody in the loop already knew: That the poor man was just a fall guy — the man who must be sacrificed for something to be seen to have been done.

He was innocent of the charges that sent him to jail for four years at Kamiti Maximum Security Prison.

Nobody has ever contradicted the account of the events that happened on that fateful weekend almost 40 years ago.

President Moi officially opened the Agricultural Society of Kenya Nyeri Show on Saturday, July 31, 1982. Afterwards, his chief of intelligence, James Kanyotu, asked him for permission to arrest soldiers who were plotting to stage a coup. Their activities were well known by the intelligence services.

President Moi turned to his military chief, General Jackson Mulinge, who advised that the military deals with them internally the following Monday rather than turn the matter over to the police. Moi went by this advice and they all went their way for the weekend.

FOUND GUILTY

But the following day, Sunday, August 1, the plotters struck and announced they had overthrown Moi on Voice of Kenya (VoK, now KBC) radio. And there, Gen Kariuki’s problems began. First, he was removed from the panel screening all Air Force personnel.

Then they court-martialled him, found him guilty of failing to prevent and suppress the coup and sent him to Naivasha Maximum Security Prison, where he spent 147 days in solitary confinement.

After that, he was sent to Kamiti where he did time in the company of murderers, rapists and violent robbers. The Commissioner of Prisons unilaterally decided he was not entitled to a remission and so Kariuki served the full four years of his jail term.

All this was just a prelude to the harrowing life he was to lead upon his release, the life that came flooding back into his mind as the sight and sounds of the funeral services for the man this paper described as Kenya’s last imperial president played out before him. “For one to understand why I have not been able to forgive the late President Moi, one needs to know my pain,” he told me this week. “My life was devastated in 1982.”

TORTURE

In searing detail, he narrated his ordeal, which is not so different from that of others who told their accounts of the Nyayo era torture. He recalled his painful experience in the hands of regime “enforcers” who seemed to believe that it wasn’t enough to destroy a man’s life; he had to be dishonoured in the process.

“As if it was not enough to have me wrongfully imprisoned in the worst possible conditions, the mental and physical torture had to continue even after my release from Kamiti Maximum Security Prison. From the moment I stepped out of the prison gates, I was under 24-hour surveillance by special police.

“My every move was being tracked, my family and the few friends who were not too terrified to associate with me were harassed, some arrested and interrogated, others threatened with deportation,” Kariuki narrated.

“My office was vandalised by special police and the same officers would frequently carjack me after I came from the bank or when I purchased a new car.

“During these carjackings I would be beaten senseless. I was once left stack naked in the middle of nowhere. During the last such horrific ordeal, the carjackers were discussing who between them would kill me and where my body would be dumped so that it would not be discovered immediately.

He continued: “Odd as it may sound, I owe a big thank you to one officer who decided to convince the others to spare my life. I don’t know his name but I pray that he reads these lines to know how deeply grateful I am for his courage and for saving my life.”

FIGHTER JET BASE

This was the fate of the man who can authoritatively claim to be one of those who laid some of the building blocks of the new Republic of Kenya at independence.

He joined the Air Force in 1964, the same year the service was inaugurated. He was a smart, ambitious young man and his bosses tapped into these qualities and tasked him with overseeing the construction of the new fighter jet base in Nanyuki in the 1970s, with the promise that if he did a good job, he would be the first commander of the base. He did a good a job and his bosses kept their word.

As a little boy, he had dreamt of flying as a career, and as a young man, his dream came true.

Then, his dreams turned into an ever better reality when it became his responsibility to participate in making decisions such as which aircraft the country would purchase for what missions.

He went shopping overseas to check out what was in the market. He went to the United Kingdom, the United States, Germany and France looking for planes to buy for his country. He was treated by his hosts like royalty. It was a case of the reality of a young officer’s life being more magical than his childhood dream.

A young country is like a new baby, and such milestones as the first unaided steps are spoken about with great excitement. In Kariuki’s case, he proudly recalls being the first Kenyan pilot to qualify as a multi-engine flight instructor, and to fly an aircraft from Canada to the KAF base in Eastleigh — feats that the middle-aged, plodding country that Kenya is today would scarcely take note of.

RELIGIOUS PEOPLE

Moi is now gone for eternity and his accounting, at least from the point of view of religious people, is for the hereafter. But the man who was once his Air Force Commander has one all-consuming earthly business still going on — to get justice.

To speak to his lawyer Paul Muite is to get a man started on how nations descend into anarchy when governments choose to ignore court orders.

Mr Muite worries that Kenya is headed that way if this is not stemmed and his passion is spellbinding. For Kariuki is not the only Kenyan facing this problem; newspaper pages are awash with these cries for justice.

“As I have reached the autumn of my life,” Kariuki told me with characteristic stoicism, “I am still not able to grasp how a Head of State could have been so vicious against a person who served his nation and government with total dedication and loyalty.

“My struggle for the truth to be acknowledged and attempts be made to at least make the wrongs right is still ongoing. Until today, I have not been allowed to heal and get closure, to perhaps one day be able to forgive the late President Moi.”

Thirty eight years on, and still counting, Kariuki continues his search for justice.